1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to acoustic data processing systems including clients sending acoustic data and servers implementing acoustic processing, and in particular to acoustic data communication devices which communicate with acoustic data processing devices so as to receive processed acoustic data for utilization in specific needs.
The present application claims priority on Japanese Patent Application No. 2010-168380, the entire content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional technologies regarding acoustic data processing systems including clients and servers have been developed and disclosed in various documents (e.g. Patent Documents 1, 2), wherein servers act as acoustic data processing devices so as to perform acoustic processing (e.g. sound-effect processing) on acoustic data received from clients (e.g. acoustic data communication devices) via communication lines. After completion of acoustic processing, acoustic data processing devices send back processing-completed data to acoustic data communication devices. Acoustic data communication devices sequentially reproduce processing-completed data received from acoustic data processing devices.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H10-177380
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H11-85148
Acoustic data communication devices need to cope with fluctuations of time periods occurring between the transmission timing for transmitting unprocessed data and the reception timing for receiving processing-completed data since these time periods are randomly varied due to various factors such as communication traffic of communication networks and processing loads of acoustic data processing devices. This occasionally causes the situation in which acoustic data communication devices have not yet received processing-completed data from an acoustic data processing device at the reproduction timing for reproducing processing-completed data. When processing-completed data are delayed, acoustic data communication devices suffer from a problem in that sound reproduction is likely to discontinue intermittently due to redundant times waiting for reception of processing-completed data.